I was positive my children would never come back to our small rural town as adults – they went to prestigious universities and were entitled to live in foreign countries (as I was a foreigner) and their father lived in a big house in a major city offering huge opportunities.
However my eldest was having mental health issues and he wasn’t sure where to go next in his life (he had been living abroad) and he was vulnerable, so he returned home age 24.
It’s been over six months and it has gone well, possibly because I followed advice gained from the internet. Apparently there was a study in American that found that kids who left home with cash in their pocket (in my head I imagined a sum like £20k) did better than those who were able to live at home for free – by a substantial amount. It was agreed that this may be because those families who can afford to give children a lump of money when they graduate are also the type of families with resources to help more indirectly with other life costs such as large Christmas presents (a car?) or they are the type of families with extensive contact books to help children obtain good jobs. Nevertheless it was some sort of evidence pointing towards some sort of action.
As a result, it appeared that some under-resourced families decided it was okay for the child to live at home as long as the child saved money, with the goal that they would have a lump sum in their pocket when they left. Now that I type this, I think that maybe most families think this is a good idea. What is different about the families I read about on the internet is that they decided that it is so central to the whole experience that it is actually essential and therefore non-negotiable.
If it helps, this is the exact situation with my son:
1. he had to get a job, this was not negotiable (a very painful experience, with lots of rural scarcity, rejections and fear – but hey that’s life),
2. he had to pay £450 per month in rent, plus pay for his own food, but all other bills were covered, and
3. he could only stay for 18 months.
I am putting £300 per month into savings (from the £450 rent paid to me) and so the goal is for him to leave with £5,000 … and the good news is that things are on track.
I have been thinking many things about the difference between Baby Boomers and Millennials (I have heard that Boomers are 17x wealthier) – and what it takes for someone to truly ‘launch’ as an adult – but at the moment it is all still unfolding so this post is just to pass on what I have learned so far, and what I am aiming to achieve.